1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the field of data processing systems. More particularly, this invention relates to event reporting between a reporting computer and a receiving computer, such as, for example, reporting the detection of a computer virus to an antivirus software provider.
2. Description of the Prior Art
It is known to provide anti-virus computer programs that act to detect computer viruses and, if required, disinfect/clean/quarantine/delete infected files. When a computer virus is detected, the known systems may generate a virus detection report that is displayed to a user to inform them of the detection event. The user may at this time be given the option of accessing a description of the nature and action of the detected computer virus with that description either being stored locally or remotely. The generation of such descriptive information is labour intensive and expensive. With many tens of thousands of known computer viruses it is difficult to determine accurately which are the common computer viruses upon which users are requesting information in order that the resources for providing such information may be concentrated on these requests.
A further problem in the anti-virus field is obtaining an accurate picture of which viruses are at any time prevalent in the user community as well as obtaining an accurate picture of what anti-virus program tools with their different versions and update states are being used to counter these virus threats.